


you are alive (inside of an endless cosmos with the freedom that shines brightest in the dark)

by thisfp



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Patrick Brewer is Gay, Some angst but with a happy ending, cw info in first set of notes, mentions of porn, mentions of unprotected sex, patrick pre-schitt's creek all the way up to mtp, slaps fic this bad boy can fit so many patrick headcanons in it, some mentions of potential homophobia but none realized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:54:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisfp/pseuds/thisfp
Summary: The first time Patrick kisses Rachel it tastes like strawberries. (or: I wrote all of my Patrick headcanons into one fic and came up with a few more along the way but also forgot to write any real scenes or dialogue)
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Patrick Brewer/Rachel
Comments: 22
Kudos: 107





	you are alive (inside of an endless cosmos with the freedom that shines brightest in the dark)

**Author's Note:**

> regarding the content warning for references of underage sex - there are references to Patrick and Rachel having sex as teenagers (it is not graphic or a super pleasant experience for Patrick but still worth mentioning). it starts with "the first time they have sex" so if you want to avoid it skip that and the next paragraph
> 
> i'm less concerned with the unsafe sex/porn mentions but in case either of those bother you the porn comes up in one paragraph that starts with "there is, at least, one small bit of progress" and the unprotected sex in a paragraph that starts with "he and David had made sure to get tested"
> 
> also - it's really important to me to state that Rachel is not the villain of this story. she and Patrick are both good (but imperfect) people who love each other a lot and didn't know what the problem is (zoinks scoob the bad guy was compulsive heteronormativity all along) but if it seems otherwise feel free to hit me up

The first time that Patrick kisses Rachel, it tastes like strawberries.

Strawberry Lip Smackers, to be specific. It's her favourite lip balm. It makes her lips shiny, the kiss slick, all artificial sweetness that lingers on Patrick's mouth far longer than the kiss itself lasts. 

They're in the seventh grade and she'd asked him if he wanted to go see a movie - some romcom, it's not really his thing but it’s Rachel’s turn to pick - and he thought it was just another hangout. It's not like they haven't seen a million movies together, sometimes with friends, sometimes just the two of them. But Rachel's parents smile at him from the front of their van when they drop them off at the theatre. They tell them to have a good time and Rachel takes his hand before they're even in the building, just as her parent’s van is pulling away from the curb.

They share a large popcorn and the bright light of the screen reflects on Rachel's Lip Smackers-covered lips when she nudges him halfway through the movie. He turns to her, expecting a joke about the lead man’s inability to hold a tune, but she kisses him instead. Then everything changes.

They go out on more dates. They start holding hands at school too, because that’s what boyfriends and girlfriends do. They argue about whether Patrick was flirting with that girl from one town over after his baseball game (he wasn’t) and whether he’s into Rachel the way she’s into him (he is, he has to be, there isn’t a single girl in their grade that he likes as much as he likes Rachel). His parents sit him down and tell him how to be safe, to treat Rachel right, that they’re proud of him. That he’s picked such a great girl for his first girlfriend. He’s not sure when exactly he picked anything, but he knows they’re right. Rachel is his friend - one of his best friends - and even if he didn’t pick her, he probably would have picked her eventually. He’s lucky that she saw all of the boys in their class and picked him. He’s lucky.

The first time they have sex, they’re alone at Patrick’s house. They aren’t normally alone (his parents are cool, but not that cool) but his parents went out for dinner with friends. Rachel sneaks into his house (he just called her to talk, but she’d hung up as soon as he said he was alone and there was a knock at the door ten minutes later). They’re in grade nine and Rachel’s lips still taste like artificial strawberries. Patrick is nervous, he knows how big of a deal this is. He can’t stop thinking of all the ways it could go wrong, the times people have said it hurts for girls the first time, the ways that sex always seems to mess everything up. He doesn’t want to hurt Rachel. He would have been fine waiting (he likes hanging out with Rachel more than any of the touching, really) but he doesn’t want to disappoint her either.

It’s awkward. He’s not really sure he wants Rachel to see him naked, or wants to see her naked. It feels like the first time he was in a school play, worried that everyone was about to laugh at him, that the bright lights shined on every imperfection. He would have been fine to just make out or to watch a movie but she pulls her top off and he fumbles with her bra and they slide under the covers when there’s nothing left to take off. She’s warm, and soft, and so pretty, but all he can focus on is how weird the condom feels, how at least he knew the choreography the first time he’d stepped onto the stage.

It doesn’t really make more sense after, but their friends tell him that it gets better, that it’s just like baseball - he just has to practice more, then it gets good. It never catches up to baseball.

It does get a little better, though. Or - easier, at least. It never really meets the expectations set by his friends or the rush of feelings he sees in the movies they watch together, but he at least gets to know the routine. It’s not like it would be the first time his friends exaggerated something. Maybe he just prefers the other part of dating - he’s always happy to cuddle with her, to play games with her, to stay up late and talk about whatever is on their minds. 

He starts to hate the taste of strawberries, though. Not real strawberries (he picks strawberries with his ma every summer and the fresh strawberry pie is worth every second of manual labour under the hot July sun), but whatever they put into Lip Smackers. That cloying sweetness that tastes nothing like strawberries, really. That he smells every time they lean in for a kiss, that lingers on his tongue like words spoken too soon. He’s not about to complain about it, though - it’s like his dad’s casserole. It’s not his favourite, but it’s food on his plate. It’s probably just too girly for him. He knows that Rachel loves it, that she loves him, that the strawberries are a part of their relationship.

There’s so much that he loves about Rachel, about being with Rachel, but it just makes him feel worse when he feels like he’s trapped, like he’s suffocating under something he can’t see. It’s him. There’s something wrong with him. He tells her as much when they break up for the first time on a stiflingly hot August day the summer after grade 10.

It’s the same song and dance when they break up again, and again, and again. Every time it feels awful, like he’s caught between wanting to keep his friend and wanting Rachel to be with someone that can make her happier. Like either way, he’ll lose. Every time his dad pats his shoulder and tells him he’ll be alright, that he’s strong, that he’ll find a girl that will make him happy. He does try with other girls, but even though none of them taste like that facsimile of strawberries, it never works with them either. So he goes back to Rachel. Again, and again, and again.

There’s something off, he knows it - hell, everybody knows it - but he also knows that whatever it is, it’s him. That it’s easier with Rachel than it is with any of the other girls. He knows this is the best he can do. He does love Rachel - she’s wonderful, his best friend, the person he wants to talk about everything with - and he knows she loves him back. She stays even when he withdraws, when he struggles to show her the same affection she dotes on him, he can’t keep an erection. She stays so he does too. He has a horrifically embarrassing conversation with his doctor (ad prays that she won’t talk to his mom about this, tells himself over and over again that patient confidentiality will keep him safe even if his doctor has shared a practice with his mom since she got her MD). 

She runs a couple tests but doesn’t find anything wrong. It’s probably in Patrick’s head, it happens to plenty of guys, it’s totally normal. She gives him a prescription for Viagra (he doesn’t fill it) and a business card for a relationship counsellor (he throws it out in a gas station bathroom after staring at himself for too long in the mirror, sickly pale under the harsh fluorescent lights).

They talk less. The things he used to love about Rachel, the things that made them such good friends before she took his hand in front of a theatre, become rare treats on the good days. He spends some nights on the couch in the living room, a wall and what feels like several thousand kilometres between them. He volunteers for a work trip, a three-day conference in Winnipeg that’s sure to be full of sad, middle-aged people trying to escape their lives for a few days.

He spends three sad days trying to escape from his life. For one absurd moment he considers lying to the person at the registration booth, telling them that his name is Keith, or Dave, that he’s from Brandon, or maybe even Saskatoon. The person clears their throat and he tells them that he’s Patrick Brewer from Whitemouth, that he’s sorry, he’s just tired from the drive (the drive was fine). He spends his evenings alone in a motel room, wondering what it would be like if he just didn’t go back.

There has to be a better life out there.

Right?

There is, probably, but - for every better life, there has to be a handful of worse ones. He’s already got so much - on paper his life is all but perfect, really - who is he to complain? How can he be this upset when he’s got a good job, friends, family, and a woman that loves him? What could possibly be out there that’s worth the risk?

He spends two sad nights in a motel and then he buys a ring. He drives back to Whitemouth with the ring in his pocket and when Rachel asks how the conference was he says it was fine, the city was fine, but he was glad to be back. It’s true, he thinks.

The ring stays in the back of a locked drawer in his desk. Though he rarely risks looking at it, it burns a hole in his mind all the same. He knows it’s the right step, that they’ve been together longer than anyone else and half their friends are already married. Their friends expect it, their families expect it. They haven’t talked about it, not really, but he knows it’s what Rachel wants. He just wants to make her happy in any way he can.

He asks her to marry him on their anniversary (the first one, of the day that Rachel invited him to a movie and took his hand in front of the theatre). He even asks at the theatre, in the same spot that they’d first held hands. She laughs, and cries, and says yes, and that’s that. He slides the ring on her finger and when they kiss it tastes like strawberries.

It all falls apart not long after. They haven’t even been engaged that long, just a few weeks, but Rachel has taken to wedding planning with all the enthusiasm she normally saves for her horse or a particularly dramatic episode of The Bachelor. Every day there’s something new - dinner options, what venues have the best views, if they should have a summer wedding when everything is in bloom or a fall wedding so they can get married when the leaves have gone gold, what kind of dress she might want. She buys bridal magazines and talks about the advice their married friends have given them, about where they should get their engagement photos done.

It feels kind of like a con to him. Why would they need engagement photos when the entire town knows? Why buy the bridal magazines that are clearly written from the perspective of a city dweller with an unlimited budget when they’re in a town of 1500 and saving for a house? He doesn’t see the appeal of weddings - he’s had fun at some, sure, and it’s nice to see how happy his friends are, but there’s so much fuss. The wedding is meant to to be the first step in a marriage, it’s not everything in and of itself. But he knows it was inevitable. The boy meets the girl, the boy falls in love with the girl, and the boy marries the girl. That’s what happens.

He feels like he’s drowning, caught in the riptide of colour palettes and florists and cake flavours. None of it feels like it matters, but it’s a minefield all the same. If he takes the wrong step, it will all blow up in his face. They decide to get married in six months and he counts down the days, not because he’s excited but because each day is one day less for him to fuck everything up.

It does blow up, though. Implodes, really, that feeling that’s been growing in his chest since he’d slid a ring onto Rachel’s finger, since Rachel took his hand, maybe. They’re making dinner together, something that they’ve done for ages, that stopped being fun a lifetime ago. Rachel is talking about the wedding (she’s always talking about the wedding). It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but then she starts talking about kids. 

Lauren, one of Patrick’s cousin, had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl she’d named after their grandmother. They’d visited her in the hospital, had brought her a teddy bear three times her size, big enough to make Lauren glare at him. But when Rachel talks about how cute she was - how cute all the Brewer babies have been, how cute their babies will be - Patrick goes cold.

Of course they’re going to have kids. That’s what married people do. That’s what their parents did, what their teachers did, what their friends are starting to do now. It’s as inevitable as their marriage, as the house they’re saving for so they won’t be renting forever. They’re going to have kids. They’re going to bring kids into this world, into a home where their dad didn’t dote affection on his wife, where their dad had always known something was wrong but never how to fix it.

He thinks of his friend Bobby, whose parents got divorced when they were 10, of how he got pulled out of school and baseball and his entire life because his mom had to move away from the wreckage of their marriage, because his dad didn’t fight to keep custody. He thinks of going over to Bobby’s house before that, of how quiet it always was there. Of how quiet Bobby was when they called each other, how he’d eventually stopped returning Patrick’s calls entirely. 

He thinks of the last sixteen years, of his younger self that didn’t want to date but didn’t want to disappoint Rachel, to hurt his best friend. He thinks of the many times that he has anyway. A lifetime dances across his mind in a moment, past regrets and future mistakes, decades more of this in the time it takes the pasta to boil over, for the water to crash and sizzle against the stovetop.

He can’t do it. He can’t marry Rachel, or give her children, or a house that will be as quiet as Bobby’s. He can’t keep waiting for it to get better, to tell his parents that everything is fine, that him and Rachel is solid. There’s so many cracks in their foundation - in his - he can’t let Rachel waste the next sixteen years too. He’s wasted so much of their time already.

He puts in his notice the next day. His upcoming promotion, every plan he’d made for the rest of his life, it all disappears as he hands his notice in to Howard first thing that morning. It’s official. Patrick Brewer is uprooting his life, and destroying his fiancée’s in the process.

He tells Rachel that night. He’d prepared himself for yelling, for hysterics, for well-deserved anger. But she’s just quiet. Rachel, who is so bright and outgoing, sinks into herself. It’s worse. Patrick deserves every second of it, but - he never wanted to hurt her like this. It breaks his heart even as he knows he would hurt her more if he stayed. She tries to give him the ring back but doesn’t fight when he tells her to keep it, that he’d bought it for her. She nods when he says he’ll have his stuff out of their place by the end of the week, that he’s leaving enough money to cover his share of the rent until the lease is up. She nods when he tells her that he’s leaving, that he’s sorry, that she deserves better.

He stays at his parents that night. They don’t ask why (they probably know why). They look tired, the same wear on their expressions that he feels in his chest. He’s too old for this, to be making these same mistakes he did when he was a kid. He’s too old to be trying to start his life over. He’s just too old.

Sitting in his old bed, in his childhood bedroom, he searches for jobs. There are some decent prospects in some of the neighbouring towns - a bank that needs someone on the books, a municipal office in search of a business manager. He could probably get any of them, he’s got solid credentials and stellar references (at least they were, before he abruptly put in his notice). He wouldn’t have to move too far.

He widens his search. It’s an impulse, but it couldn’t possibly hurt (at least, not more). He’s lived in Manitoba his entire life, has barely seen anything of Canada. There’s so much out there - he could move to a town in BC and live in the mountains, ski whenever the mood strikes, or go east to PEI and relish in the rolling hills and red beaches. Hell, he could move up to Nunavut and live with the polar bears. There’s so much out there, but it’s always felt out of his reach. Like there’s some invisible barrier between him and - and anything. Patrick Brewer was meant to grow old in Whitemouth, with a wife and kids, a house they’d lived in for decades. That was the plan. It had always been the plan, even when he was too young to know it.

He calls a man in Northwestern Ontario. It’s an odd posting - something that seems like a business manager, but for disparate companies - but it’d be about a ten hour drive from here. It’s not the furthest edges of Canada, but neither is it in their backyard. He could run away, could hide from the ashes of what he’d burned down, but not have to write it off entirely. He won’t be able to return regularly (if anyone asks, he doesn’t think they will) but he could return someday. Maybe. Maybe that’s what he needs, anyway. Just enough distance to keep from coming back, from falling into the same old habits that had been so hard to break. That had let him hurt the people he loves.

The town is called Schitt’s Creek. It feels like a sign - like one you walk into when you’re walking without paying attention to where you’re going. It’s the perfect place for him to exile to, to try and mend the fragments of his life, to figure out what he’s supposed to do now that he’s thrown everything away. He fills his car with as much as will fit and donates the rest, tells his parents that he’ll be in Ontario, that he’ll call them once he gets there. He doesn’t tell them the name of the town, or that he’ll be living with a man he’s never met, that the man gave him a job, a place to live, a way to leave.

Before he leaves, his mom takes his face in her hands and asks if he’ll be okay, if this will make him happy. He says yes and hopes he sounds more sure than he feels.

He meets Ray Butani after a ten hour drive. Ray doesn’t comment on how stale he is, on the dark, angry bags under his eyes. Instead, he gives Patrick a tour of his house, shows him the room he’ll be staying in. The walls are covered in flowers, the same kind of tacky wallpaper that filled Aunt Pam’s house (but at least this room doesn’t have any dolls). When they end the tour in the kitchen, Ray offers him some of the chili he’d kept warm on the stove and Patrick has to fight the urge to hug him. He’s not going to be alone here.

He takes a scalding hot shower and lets himself cry as he washes off the grime of a ten hour car ride, as he mourns the life he lost (for all he knew it didn’t fit).

Ray is great. Ray is strange, and chatty, and incredibly kind. That he doesn’t know anything about Patrick might actually be Patrick’s favourite thing about him, though. He doesn’t know about Rachel, about how he’d disappointed his parents, about the life Patrick had left behind. When Ray asks what made Patrick moves and Patrick just says it was time for a change of scenery, he accepts it without second thought. He accepts Patrick.

Slowly, Patrick begins to settle in, adjusting to the pace of Schitt’s Creek. The town is a bit smaller than Whitemouth but far less remote, surrounded by other towns that makes it feel like everything goes faster. That just might be Ray, though. The man never stops. He introduces Patrick to Twyla at the café, to Grace at the library, to all of the people that stop by for Ray’s help. The amount he learns about the town when he asks Ray about the local sports scene is probably enough on its own for him to get by.

Ray, it seems, knows everyone that has so much as passed through Schitt’s Creek. He says he used to be on the council, back before he decided to focus on his ever-expanding rural empire. He tells Patrick of the Schitts, of the other businesses in town, of the chili cook off that seems to be plagued by one disaster after another. They talk about Ray’s family in Winnipeg and whether the Jets will ever win the cup, how fun it would be to go to Festival du Voyageur together. Ray seems to have a never-ending capacity to chat, but is only as intrusive as Patrick allows, cheerfully following Patrick’s lead when he changes the subject. He’s good enough to work for - it’s hardly what Patrick had pictured for himself, but it’s refreshing in its own way, to have new problems to solve every day (even if most of them are solved by filling out the right paperwork).

Then he meets David Rose.

In Whitemouth David would have stuck out like a sore thumb. He would be visiting, or just passing through, looking straight ahead as he makes the five minute drive through the town. But Schitt’s Creek, as Patrick is quickly learning, is nothing like Whitemouth. So David does not walk into Ray’s house to ask for directions or because his car broke down. He walks in for a business license.

He looks like he walked out of a magazine, or some television ad for something too fancy for Patrick. He looks like he knows exactly who he is. But then he tells Patrick about his business (talks around it, really) and gets flustered when Patrick teases him, and it’s the most fun Patrick’s had in ages.

Ray tells him about the Roses after he’s wrapped up the photoshoot, long after David has left (though he’d hardly know it, from the way David’s big, expressive eyebrows linger in his mind). He finds six voicemails on his phone at the end of the day and has to excuse himself and finish listening to them upstairs because he can’t stop smiling. He goes back downstairs and listens to them again so he can fill out the application. If he listens to them a third time, well. Ray had left halfway through the second playthrough so it’s not like there’s anyone around to know. 

When David picks the form and is speaking as soft as his sweater must feel, Patrick wants to tease him again until he teases back, until he has to smile again. He wants to talk about David’s business more, here, in person, so he can call David Patrick, so he can see David’s reaction when he asks him how exactly Julie Andrews plays into his decision to go with a more natural palette for the space. David doesn’t linger, but he hopes they’ll cross paths again soon. 

He goes hiking the next morning. He’s found a few trails he really likes since moving out here, but there’s one in particular - not quite as challenging as he’d like, but it has a view that reminds him of early mornings in Whiteshell. It’s only a few kilometres each way, but it’s a good stretch of his legs, a way for him to feel a little less like he’s itching to shed his skin (they had a class gecko in grade three that did that once - it was disgusting, and has remained lodged in his mind ever since). He leaves Ray’s when the sun is just beginning to peak out from the horizon and steps onto the path with the trees bathed in the golden early morning light. It doesn’t take long for his mind to wander beyond the path, to make the thirty minute drive back to Schitt’s Creek, to the man that sat across from him and told him about his business idea. Well, the man that had used a bunch of buzzwords then went and got high and left him six voicemails talking about his business idea and the horrific lack of good dry cleaners anywhere within a reasonable driving distance.

It’s a good idea. A great idea, even. A way to bring local crafters together, like a mix of a general store and a permanent (and slightly pretentious) farmer’s market. Patrick may not have been here for very long but he can already tell it could be a perfect fit for this colourful town. From David’s voicemails it doesn’t seem like he’s the most on top of the technical side of running a business (after Ray’s quick rundown on the Roses dramatic arrival in Schitt’s Creek it seemed like he could probably learn a lot about David from a quick google search, but he knew he wanted to learn everything about David from the man himself), but the idea was the important part.

Hell, Patrick’s got an MBA and how long has he been sitting on his hands, totally unable to come up with an idea he could put all of his experience behind. He spent years training to do it, to build something up from the ground himself, but he never knew how to make that leap. He’d made endless plans but never come up with an idea that seemed worth it, and then he’d set that dream on the back burner so he could focus on something steady instead, something that could buy a ring and a house. David had come up with an idea and had followed it, had pushed it forward without waiting to make sure every safeguard was in place.

He wishes he had that kind of energy. As short as their interactions had been, he felt alive with David in a way he hasn’t in a long time. David was so unapologetically himself. Even when Patrik had pushed at him he pushed back (though Patrick had a feeling it was with a fraction of what David is capable of), had held his ground, knowing his idea was solid even if the explanation needed some work.

Patrick had never put much thought into how he expresses himself. He’s just Patrick. He plays baseball and music and he knows how to run a business (for all that he’s yet to really do that). He was raised to be professional and polite (with the exception of Brewer game nights, but he’ll be damned if that isn’t built into his genes like his pale skin). The most expressive he gets is when he’s on stage but even then it was always a role. He hasn’t performed an original piece since he stopped doing open mics nights in high school, it’s always been someone else’s work even when he wasn’t explicitly given a role.

It reminds him of when he first joined a senior ball team in eighth grade. Matt Campbell was the star, the captain, two years older than Patrick with a killer changeup. He was tall and had the brightest smile (like Dermot Mulroney in My Best Friend’s Wedding, which Rachel had been obsessed with). Patrick wanted to be him. Wanted to be better than him, even. He had always been competitive, but that year it was all he could think about. He’d run drills nearly every day, begged his parents to drive him to the batting cages. Halfway through the year they had sat him down and asked him why his grades were slipping, made him ease back until he got them back up. It felt like Tony Fernández was right there in front of him, knocking his helmet whenever he’d managed a solid hit. 

They’d had a team campout at the end of the season. He was across the fire from Matt, had watched the way the flames lit up his face like the stars shining above them. The guys were talking about their summer plans, about the Blue Jays, about whether Tommy really had fingered someone at the movie theatre or if he made it up from whole cloth, but Patrick just wanted to listen to Matt. He wanted to ask Matt if he ever went hiking in Whiteshell, he wanted to ask Matt if he was going to play college ball, he wanted to ask if he ever found himself in Whitemouth even though he lived two towns over and Whitemouth had approximately nothing to offer for fun. He wanted -

He wanted.

Oh.

He makes it to the end of the path on muscle memory alone, dropping onto a log as soon as he reaches the clearing. The piece he’d been missing clicks into place with a horrifying ease and everything suddenly makes more sense. Why he loved Rachel, but never in the way he should have. Why he always felt more comfortable around the girls in his grade but whenever he’d tried to be with another woman it never worked. Why he always got breathless when he would watch the older boys play ball.

He’s gay.

He’s almost thirty and he’s just now realizing that he’s gay.

Fuck.

He cries, sitting there on the ground. He cries for the painfully obvious, for all of the moments that had passed him by without second though. He cries for the life he lost, for the life he might never have. He cries until he can’t, until he’s just sitting there, utterly exhausted and probably dehydrated. Eventually he gets up and walks back and when he catches his own gaze in the rear-view mirror he doesn’t look any different than he had this morning (puffy eyes aside).

He doesn’t look gay, he doesn’t think. But - what does that even look like? There weren’t any gay people back in Whitemouth (at least, not openly) and he has to imagine that the gay people he saw on TV were as inaccurate as everything else. He still just looks like Patrick.

Ray doesn’t act any differently either. He’s just as cheerful and friendly, with a chickpea curry he insists on sharing before Patrick’s all the way through the door. He asks about the hike, about how Patrick would review it if there were a service like that to help people find the best local trails. He listens to Ray talk about how Ontario Parks has completely failed to capture the power of the internet and wonders what he’s supposed to do now.

It’s just another day in Schitt’s Creek, really.

He wakes up at the normal time the next day and helps a few more people work through their business-related issues. He gets lunch at the café and watches The Bachelor with Ray. Nothing changes. Patrick is gay and the world keeps turning.

He thinks about David a lot over the next few days. David, who is handsome, and funny, and knows himself. David, with the good, slightly pretentious business. He wonders if he could ask David about this. If he could ask David on a date.

He thinks about Rachel too. About what she would say, if she’d - if she’d be mad or disappointed in him. Why didn’t he figure it out earlier? Why did he waste so much of her time? He doesn’t think that she’s - that she would actually be mad, at least not for that, but - he doesn’t know. They’d never had reason to talk about it. There’s enough space in that grey area for his mind to run wild, to imagine the worst case scenario and then find a way to make it worse. Mostly, he wants her to know that he finally figured it out. That he can finally say for certain that it had nothing to do with her. That he’s sorry.

He also wonders what his parents would say. How they could possibly take it seriously after everything he’d done, after he’d run away. Would they just think this was him continuing to spiral? Would they disown him? What about his extended family, his cousins? How would they look at him now?

It’s all kind of a moot point, though. Who knows when he’ll go home again. He talks with his parents every week and he’s mostly kept up with the cousin groupchat but aside from a very stilted conversation when his mom said she’d run into Rachel at the store everyone is on eggshells around him. They ask how he’s doing but not where he is or when he’s coming back though he knows they are expecting him to come back. Maybe he’s at least made Uncle Rick happy now that he’s not the only black sheep in the family.

He thinks Ray would probably take it well - he’s only ever been less than totally cheerful when things get particularly dramatic on The Bachelor, and even then he seems to eat it up delightedly - but it’s so much more real with him. He barely knows anything about Patrick, would he - would he accept it? Would that just become another piece of Patrick, like how he’s also from Manitoba? Or - would it be a problem? Is that what it would take to make Ray not like him? Hell, Ray’s his boss and landlord, that could go bad in so many ways.

He keeps it to himself, tries to feel out this new part of him. It’s a lot, like a whole new organ that’s pushed itself somewhere between his heart and lungs and now he has to figure out how to breathe around it. He doesn’t know how to make it settle without talking to someone, but he can’t talk to someone until it feels more solid. A catch-22 wrapped around his entire life.

There is, at least, one small bit of progress. He reads up on people who discover their sexuality later in life (and god, does it feel unbelievably good for him to know that he’s not alone), which turns into reading about queer relationships, which turns into - well. It turns out that porn is far more effective when he’s interested in the actors. It’s still overwhelming, looking at the very intense stills of men engaged in all kinds of sex. The first few videos he clicks on almost make him give up but then he finds one of a man giving a blowjob that - it’s extremely hot. The man seems to be having the time of his life, maybe even enjoying it more than his partner. He’s never seen anyone enjoy it this much, and the grunts and low groans send a constant stream of sparks down his spine until he feels like he’s the faceless partner getting the blowjob of his life. 

He wonders what it would be like for him to look down and see a beautiful man between his legs. He wonders what it would like to be that man, to be between another man’s legs, to be doing that. How it would feel in his mouth, what it would taste like. He comes harder than he has in his life. After, when he’s had a shower and come down from the endorphin rush, he wants to know what it feels like to kiss a man. How it would be different, what it would feel like if the man had stubble or a beard. What it would feel like to hold a man in his arms, or if he would like being held. It’s probably just the loneliness that comes with moving to a new town, but he thinks he would.

Everything else kind of remains ephemeral, though. With the series of epiphanies he’s been distracted at work, unable to focus when the job feels as transient as everything else. Everything’s rotated, twisted around just enough for him to lose his grip. He begins daydreaming, losing himself in nothing, in something he can’t identify. He checks for updates on David’s business a few times a day even though he knows not to expect the license for a few more days. Even knowing now that he’s attracted to David he still thinks about his business too, about what it could become.

He knew as soon as he’d read over Ray’s posting that it likely wouldn’t be permanent. Ray had wanted someone to hold the fort down while he tests out some new ventures, a temporary right hand man whose job would likely change as he grew his conglomeration. Patrick knew it would be temporary and was happy with that, with the flexibility that let him leave Whitemouth without making a big commitment somewhere else. But now it just feels like yet another way he’s untethered. He wants something to hold onto, something solid. He wants in on David’s business.

It’s - he’s never worked with someone he’s liked (at least not knowingly), but it’s not like - just because he likes David doesn’t mean anything would happen. Obviously. He doesn’t even know if David is into guys. Even if David is he might not be into Patrick, or want to deal with this whole - development. That would have to be separate, but Patrick’s always been good at compartmentalization. He’s good at planning, too.

He builds a solid plan over a couple evenings and as it becomes more concrete he feels like he’s pulling himself together too, if only a bit. He lets Ray know, which is a bit of a risk given the way even the most banal information spreads through town, but the least Ray deserves is a heads up after everything he’s done for Patrick. It’s exciting too, to verbalize it, to say that he’s interested in David even if it’s only in a professional capacity. Ray is supportive even if he’s not quite as enthusiastic as Patrick is (there’s some kind of drama about a chain Christmas-themed store which he can’t imagine would ever survive in Schitt’s Creek, but it seems to have made an impact anyway).

David’s business license arrives the next day. It comes in the same plain brown envelope that every license does, but it feels monumental, the physical proof of David’s work, of Patrick’s hopes. He drives to Elmdale only to agonize over the few available frames. From what he knows about David, he knows this is an important decision (but he also feels like he’s colourblind and trying to pick the exact shade to match the vibrant, colourful world David favours and he’s got six shades to work with). He doesn’t think he nails the frame but he thinks he at least picks out the best one given his options, though maybe he should have planned for that and ordered one. Either way, he drives straight to the building that will soon be known as Rose Apothecary.

There are boxes everywhere, products already beginning to fill up the shelves. Most notably, there’s a woman. He should have known that there would be someone - someone as beautiful and vibrant as David, someone that stands out. She immediately introduces herself as David’s sister and life coach and he immediately squashes down his relief, only becoming more flustered when she starts to flirt with him. It makes David glare at her, though, which - that’s something. He gets roped into helping move boxes but he doesn’t know how to tell David he wants to be a part of his business in front of his sister, when everything is already so different from what he’d imagined. He stays as long as he can, trying to wait Alexis out, but even though she threatens to go hang out with Twyla several times she never does. He leaves, exhilarated at having spent a couple hours with David and completely disappointed in himself for not following through with his plans.

But he goes back the next day. His heart races as he tells David that he’s not there for Alexis, that he wants to join his business. David says yes and just like that they’re partners. Business partners.

He doesn’t tell David that he’s gay, that he’s liked David from the moment he saw David ingesting Ray’s engagement shoot. The words are on the tip of his tongue but they crumble, turning into dust before he can release them. It’s not everything he’d planned, but it’s something. Watching David’s face light up as he smiles, Patrick knows it’s enough.

He transitions out of Ray’s business, doing his best to tie up every loose end (though he imagines there will always be loose ends as Ray continues to expand) as he spends more and more time at the store. Their store. The aesthetics are entirely David’s realm, but he immerses himself in setting up spreadsheets and every kind of plan they’ll possibly need to ensure a smooth takeoff. They go on vendor runs together so he can meet the people David’s already brought on board, so he can help sell the plan to others. It’s exciting, all of it, with David. 

David is sarcastic, and so expressive, and the last thing from a morning person (but he does start coming to the store a bit earlier when they nail down the hours, regularly enough for Patrick to memorize his coffee order). He knows absolutely nothing about sports and everything about avant-garde artists in every medium. He seems like the polar opposite of Patrick, but everything Patrick learns just makes him want to learn more. He wants David.

It’s an ache, but one he begins to welcome. A bruise that reminds him he’s alive, that he stepped outside his comfort zone, that he’s healing. He may not be able to act on it but he can experience it all the same. He can let himself desire this man, can relish in the feeling for all that it will remain something he keeps to himself. It feels like he’s wrapped up in a blanket fresh out of the dryer, like he’s speeding through the bases knowing he’ll see home. He feels like he’s really, truly alive, even when he has to remind David three times that it really is his turn to sweep.

It gets better outside of the store, too. He settles in on the baseball team, gets to know people he thinks he can start calling friends without a hitch in his throat. Ray, especially, makes him feel more and more like he could call this place home. He doesn’t go home for his birthday because they’re a week away from opening and he - it’s just not the right time. But Ray takes him out to one of the nicest restaurants in the Elms and brings him back home to a cake he’d made himself while Patrick had been at the store. Ray covers the cake in candles and sings to him, just the two of them standing in his kitchen. It’s Ray’s patented brand of oddly sweet, an awkward moment that moves Patrick with the force of a tidal wave. 

After, when they’re eating cake and watching a rerun of Corner Gas he tells Ray that he’s gay. It comes out of nowhere, like it had been hiding and got caught on his fork, pulled out without a second thought. It seems to take him by surprise more so than Ray. Ray asks if he’s seeing anyone and, when he says no, starts talking about his matchmaking business and the queer group that gets together once a month over in Elm Glen. That’s that.

He gets to know Twyla better too. She’s a sweet woman, even if some of her stories are incredibly concerning. Really, chatting with her just solidifies his theory that Schitt’s Creek is where the little rascals came to grow up. He enjoys talking to her about music and food. One morning when he pops in for a tea for himself and a coffee for David, she tells him about a music festival out in Elmdale, asking him if he’d like to go with her, that they could have dinner over there after. A few days after his birthday, the words come to him on purpose this time. He tells her that he’s gay, that he would love to go with her as friends. She smiles at him as brightly as ever and says yes, absolutely, and asks him if he’s checked out The Dude Cave as she hands over the drinks.

He has not checked out The Dude Cave.

The website looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2000, which takes him on a weird trip back to the time his college roommate showed him porn and all he could think about was the website design. It’s a little overwhelming, thinking about going to an ill-lit bar full of scantily clad men (he closes and reopens the tab several times before he’s able to really look through it) but it seems like a good way to dip his toe in the water. Well, it’s a way to dip his toe in the water.

He drives by The Dude Cave one evening, after a long day of carefully not thinking about it. It’s incredibly out of the way (probably for the best, really), but he puts on the verbal directions so he has something to follow. He drives past the nondescript building but pulls into the next lot, the building just visible in his rearview mirror. It’s the last kind of place he would have gone, back in his old life. But maybe this is just him now. New Patrick.

He sits in the lot for half an hour, trying to weigh the pros and cons. It’s not - he wants to be with a man. Badly. He wants to know what stubble feels like against his skin, what it’s like to kiss someone he’s attracted to, how it feels to hold someone else’s cock in his hands. In his mouth. In him. He wants to know all of the physical aspects, but - he wants the emotional, too. He wants to experience being with someone in all of the ways he hasn’t before. He stayed with Rachel because he loved being with her, because that was always better than the other women he tried to be with, even when the sex had gone okay. Even with the fun new dimensions to masturbation, he can’t imagine just finding some random guy to hook up with, having to get naked and pretend like sex hasn’t been some messy, complicated thing he’d avoided since his first time with some guy whose name he just learned. That’s just not for him, this doesn’t have to be a sprint with some mad dash to the finish line (though it is a marathon, maybe, one he’s been jogging through for years, one that he’s only just recognized, that’s just started to feel less like a drag and more like something he wants to move through).

He doesn’t go to The Dude Cave. Instead, he stops by the store and catches David red-handed, pacing through the store an hour after he’d said he’d go home, stressing out about how the flow of the store is all wrong, about whether they really need to sell the houseware items deemed too basic for any of their vendors to bother with (they do). He talks David down and takes him to the café to distract him with carbs and lets him go off on a tangent about the latest Rick Owen pieces. It’s nothing like getting a lap dance from some half-naked hunk (he thinks), but it feels good all the same.

They open the store, pulling in a crowd far larger than David had anticipated for his ‘soft opening’, which is immensely satisfying on quite a few levels. He spends nearly the whole day at the register, catching David’s gaze in the spare moments, trying to savour David’s glow of success even as he struggles to keep the line manageable. It’s good. It’s so incredibly good. At the end of the day, as David is restocking, he puts the first receipt aside. For all that David claims to be chill, to be too cool to be seriously attached, he deserves this reminder that he’s succeeded. 

The store doesn’t maintain that initial rush, but that’s to be expected. It’s hard to stress about it when he gets David to himself with each lull between customers. He fumbles a few times, nudging himself towards the precipice of dating (or any kind of non-work-related socializing, really) but every time he pulls back. It’s a viscous cycle, a constant tightness in his throat, but it just seems like one step too far when he’s already gained so much here. One night he downloads Bumpkin only to immediately see Ray’s profile and deletes his own in a panic. It’s fine. It’s not a race.

Then he finds out it’s David’s birthday. He stumbles through an invitation to the café which hardly has the kind of ambience he’d imagined, but it’s hard to be disappointed when David says yes. They’re going to dinner. Together. He wishes he knew sooner, that he’d had a reason to see David’s ID or that either of them were the kind of person to use social media with any regularity. But he didn’t and they aren’t, so he’s got half a day to come up with a plan.

He needs to do something special. More special than just a normal dinner at the café. David, the connoisseur of romcoms that he is, would probably love (and very much deserves) a grand gesture, but not some haphazard one that Patrick came up with this afternoon. Singing is out (but boy, there’s a thought), and there’s no way he could give David a taste of the luxuries he once knew. They have so little in common, but the store -

It has to be the receipt. He’d been saving it for a business-related celebration, but it’s perfect. The manifestation of David’s success, of their partnership, the achievements they’ve shared and, hopefully, a sign of what they may share down the road. Fortunately he’d already ordered a frame for it, something plain and black but hopefully sleek enough to appease David’s tastes (he’s trying). 

Knowing that he’s got a plan keeps him calm through the rest of the day, but he realizes his predicament when he gets home after agreeing to meet at the café in ninety minutes - it’s far too much time. There’s seventy-five minutes left and all he has to do is get dressed. He wishes he could go for a run, but he’s stuck here, utterly breathless as he checks the time. He combs through his entire wardrobe, wishing for the first time that he was a little more stylish so he’d have something to impress David, something dressy but not business-y. He wants something that makes it unmistakable.

Patrick Brewer is going on a date.

He gets to the café a few minutes early and settles in a booth, very carefully not glancing at the door every time there’s a noise while he chats with Twyla, the black gift bag next to him blaringly loud in his peripheral vision. He double guesses his jacket - here in the café it feels like too much, like he’s trying too hard, but then if he goes out to his car and comes back without it that will be obvious too. Besides, this is a special occasion. It’s worth the effort. David is worth the effort.

He taps his knuckles against the laminate countertop, looking blankly at the sizeable menus. David wouldn’t stand him up, right? He wouldn’t do that. David would have just told him straight out that he’s not interested, or - he would have found some other way to let Patrick down easy. The last thing David would have done is stand him up, if only because he’d know that Patrick would be there at the store the very next day. He’d said yes, had said he’d see Patrick here. He’ll be here.

David does come in a few minutes later, the lightning bolt that stretches across his chest matching the jolt in Patrick’s. He’s beautiful, and he changed for this, and he compliments Patrick as he sits down. It’s really happening. They’re on a date.

They are not on a date.

At least - David isn’t. It’s just a birthday dinner with friends. Of course he’d invite Stevie, it’s not even like they’ve ever even done anything outside of work before, really. He excuses himself and digs his palms against his eyes until he sees spots, until he stops feeling like he’s about to hyperventilate. David is just letting him down gently, in a way that lets them sweep this under the rug and pretend it never happened so David wouldn’t have to tell him thanks but no thanks, that he’s not interested in someone like Patrick. He wouldn’t want to make a scene. Or - or maybe David doesn’t even know that this was meant to be a date. Maybe Patrick is so far from date-worthy to David that he’d heard Patrick asking him out to dinner and just assumed it was platonic, that Patrick was only hanging out with him because his family already had plans.

It’s a moot point, really. Either way this isn’t a date. He takes a few deep breaths and tells himself that it’s fine. He can try Bumpkin again. It can be enough, being David’s friend and business partner. He can go back out there and spend the evening teaming up with Stevie to tease David.

He goes back out to find his present sitting on the table, right in front of David. Of course. He slides back into the booth and resigns himself to losing all of his dignity tonight. He watches as David opens it, how his expression melts with recognition. It can just be about the store. As long as David is happy, it’s enough.

But then Stevie pushes at him and says she has to leave. He doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that she can tell what this is, if this is a spot she’ll poke and prod at the next time they see each other. He wonders what it means that she left. Twyla leaves too, and then it’s just the two of them.

He still doesn’t think it’s a date, but it is nice. He steers clear of business talk, asking David about previous birthdays instead. He asks about David’s childhood and listens to him talk about travelling around the world, about beautiful places and beautiful people, about things so stunningly far from Patrick’s reach. David asks about him, too, so he tells him about getting up to mischief with his cousins, about the time his parents took him to Disney World and he got lost in Adventureland until Aladdin saved him. He’d tell David anything, everything, to keep him smiling like that.

They sit in the booth for hours, talking and eating and smiling until Patrick’s face hurts. They order three desserts that he convinces David to share and he’s not sure he’s ever felt more powerful. As they spar with their forks over the last few bites of the brownie, it feels more like a date than anything Patrick has experienced. This is what he wants. It’s been worth the wait.

He offers to drive David home even though it’s just a few minutes walk to the motel. He feels breathless in the time it takes David to nod, like the three extra minutes will be enough, will be that last bite of a delicious meal that sates Patrick (he doesn’t think he’ll ever be done with David). He knows he’s wrong as soon as David says yes.

It won’t be enough. He wants to drag it out longer, wants to make a pitstop in Thunder Bay so he can savour every extra second with David next to him. It just feels worse, each moment putting him one moment closer to having to say goodbye, even if it’s only for the night. In the time it takes David to get frustrated with the radio stations and shut it off entirely he’s pulling into the motel’s parking lot. He parks in front of David’s room and wants to keep David talking, to make him laugh again, to see the way his gaze sparkles even in the low light. He wants, he wants, he wants.

He teases David and he wants, he watches David nod and he wants, his gaze falls to David’s mouth and he wants this more than he’s wanted anything in his life. Then David leans cups his head and leans forward.

He tastes like vanilla.

Like the vanilla lip balm they carry at the store, to be specific. The lip balm that David had applied as they left the restaurant, that Patrick had told himself hadn’t meant anything (it meant something). He loses track of that almost as soon as he tastes it, caught on the scratch of David’s stubble against his face, the gentle press of fingertips on his neck, the puff of breath against his cheek.

It’s dizzyingly good, everything he’d hoped for. Even sitting down, he still feels like he could fall if he isn’t careful (he’s already fallen, he thinks). He thanks David and David smiles at him, tells him they can talk tomorrow, that they can talk anytime he wants. He wants to talk all the time. He wants to crawl inside David, to rest his head against David's heart, to keep David safe, to know his every desire, to soothe his every fear. He wants everything he could possibly have with David and then some.

He wakes up at five the next morning and thinks of vanilla. He goes to the store early, as the sun is just beginning to tip up above the horizon, and almost buys a tube of lip balm for himself. He knows it wouldn’t be the same. He waits for David instead, keeping himself busy minding the store. Their store.

David asks if he can spend the night, which - he wants it, badly - but he knows he can’t. Not yet. Just kissing David is so heady, he needs time to adjust, to build a tolerance. He wants to savour each moment, every step they take together. He’s not in a rush.

They kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss some more. He loses himself in David, in the slick slide of his tongue, in the way his body sets itself alight as David trails kisses down his neck. David hooks his fingertips in Patrick’s belt and tells him it’s a monstrosity, which just makes him want to see David take it off. It’s too much and nowhere near enough. For all that David rarely deigns to wear colour himself, he’s made Patrick’s world brighter, more vibrant, like there’s a whole new layer to everything that he hadn’t noticed before. Maybe that’s why David is always in black and white.

He doesn’t know how people live like this, how anyone gets anything done when they feel like this. He just wants to stay in the back room and feel David get hard against him, feel David play his body the way he plays his guitar. It’s intoxicating (and makes a lot of his friends’ comments in high school make more sense, but he tries not to think about that too much). They barely get enough privacy to kiss at Ray’s and he can’t imagine they’d do any better at the motel, but maybe they can rent a room somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where they have to go, he just wants to be there.

They catch a lucky break when Stevie catches David in the process of giving him a hickey (which is so unbelievably hot, but the same reason he’d said they shouldn’t fool around in the store in the first place). It’s maybe not as nice as he first thought when some tall, gorgeous hunk comes into her apartment and kisses David, but - he’ll still get her some wine. They start a necessary conversation, but one he knows will not combine well with their plans. He needs to tell David about Rachel, about all of the things that led him to Schitt’s Creek, but today is about a different step in their relationship.

David takes his clothes off and kisses the newly revealed skin, the bits of Patrick that he hadn’t seen before (the freckles scattered across his shoulders seem to be a particular hit), and asks Patrick what he wants. He wants everything, all of it and more. He’d do anything with David, to David, for David. David makes him come embarrassingly fast, but the heat of it seeps away with David’s smile, with the way David presses against him and whispers in his ear.

That night, he takes David’s cock in his hand, in his mouth. It’s so, so much better than he’d thought, better than any video, any fantasy. If they were younger he’d keep at it all night, would keep David up and spend every second of it wringing pleasure out of him. They aren’t younger, though, but he can’t bring himself to mind when it means he gets to fall asleep next to David, to wake up and see how David’s hair looks first thing in the morning, to feel how his fingers slide over David’s chest hair and the sleep-warm skin beneath. It’s every bit as good as the night before.

He watches David sing Christmas carols in the dead of summer, in front of the entire town. He listens to David rant about mints, to call Patrick his boyfriend (it might be his favourite slip of David's tongue so far, as multi-talented as his tongue is). He sings to David, too, pouring everything into it, all of the feelings that have only grown stronger since he'd first walked into Ray's, the words that he doesn't think he can speak aloud quite yet. They kiss and fuck and sleep together and eat together, and Patrick can see himself doing this for the rest of his life.

Then Rachel shows up.

He should have seen it coming. She'd texted him a few times since he moved but he never texted back, didn't know what to say when there was so much to be said. It wasn't something to be said over text or even on the phone, but he couldn't just drive back to his hometown to tell his ex-fiancée that he wouldn't be coming back, that he has a boyfriend and a store and a life he'd built somewhere else. She's not his best friend, hasn't been since he left (for real this time), but he still cares about her. She's an open wound, an end left loose, not forgotten but not dealt with. He's always been too good at compartmentalization.

He should have seen it coming, but he didn’t. He was so caught up in David - in this town - and he felt so safe here, it was all too easy to lose himself in it, all too hard to confront his past when it put everything on the line. In a split second (with a flap of Alexis’ wrist), he saw it all come down anyway. He deserves it, but - David doesn’t. Rachel doesn’t. He tries to talk to David, but of course David doesn't want that. Of course David wants him to leave, doesn't want to have to deal with this. He was supposed to be the one helping David through messes, not the one causing them. Let alone in front of his entire family.

Rachel had booked a room at the motel (of course she had), so he joins her there, sits on the bed and wonders if David's family is out there with an ear to the door, waiting to see how Patrick could explain himself (they probably have better ideas than he does at this point). Rachel just sits there, close but not touching, arms folded across her chest, quiet like the day he'd told her he was leaving.

He has to tell her. He knows he does, but - this isn't like telling Ray. He flounders, then decides to start from the beginning. He tells her about Ray, how he moved here because he found a job. He tells her about how he met David, how he decided to ask to join David's business. That he liked David, in a way he hasn't liked anyone before. He sees the moment that Rachel works it out, puts the numbers together (she's always been good at math). She asks if he's bi, and drops his gaze when he says no.

He tells her that he’s gay, that he had no idea until he got here, that he’s sorry. He’s so sorry. It’s not enough (it never will be), it won’t give back all the years he took from her, but it’s true. She starts to talk, then stops. She asks if it was her, but he says no. None of this was her fault, that he stayed with her as long as he did because he loved her, even if it wasn't in the way he should have, the way she deserved.

When she asks about David, he knows he shouldn’t gush about the person he loves to the person he loved, that he’d spent years trying to love like this. But he tells her about David’s particular tastes, about how he won’t go near dirt but will eat anything, how he doesn’t know the first thing about baseball. She doesn’t try to stop him, just listens (she’s always been a good listener). He asks about her, about life back home. She shrugs and says nothing’s really changed.

This time when she gives him the ring, he takes it. Maybe he can sell it and do something for her, something better than telling her to keep this artifact of a previous life (something that, in retrospect, probably meant something different than he'd intended). She asks if he's told his parents and when he shakes his head she tells him that he should, that they love him more than life itself. That they'll understand, like he hasn't been gone for months, hasn't been able to talk to them for longer.

She tells him that his secret's safe with her, which - he aches, he's been aching since he laid eyes on her (longer, far longer, though he'd eventually gotten used to that pang, that earned weight on his shoulders). That's not fair to her, to his parents, to David. God, he wants them to know David. They do know David as his business partner, have spoken to him on the phone as Patrick's business partner, but they don't know his exacting style, the way he tries to push his smile into the corner of his mouth, how he kisses Patrick's cheek. Kissed, rather.

It's a fierce reminder of how painfully good Rachel is, how kind she is, how much he loves her. He’s missed her, missed talking to her, missed her smile (not that he's seen it here). She says that she needs time, but that maybe they don't need to stop talking completely. Maybe they can be in each other's lives, a little bit, when she's ready. He nods, and he hugs her back, wishing desperately that he could do more to take the weight from her shoulders.

He shows her the store before she leaves that night. It's risky, he knows, walking into the store after hours with a striking redhead that nobody here knows. Most people know that he's gay by this point, that he's stupidly and entirely in love with David, but he's yet to see something that the rumour mill of Schitt's Creek couldn't grind up and squeeze to death. But she deserves to see it, to see what he's found here. He gives her as many products as she's willing to take and when she jokes about the aesthetic, how everything looks to nice to have been Patrick's doing, he laughs.

It's the first time since he'd last seen her that he feels like maybe he hasn't completely destroyed everything, that some of this is salvageable. That maybe he can have Schitt’s Creek without losing all of Whitemouth. He tells her that whatever she wants, whenever she wants to talk, he'll be here. When she kisses his cheek in front of the register, he smells strawberries. This time she leaves and he hopes that this isn’t the end.

He buys David flowers, and chocolates, and a bracelet. He buys him so much, knowing that none of it is enough. Stevie keeps him appraised of David's wellbeing, tells him to give him space but also the room number they stay in when they spend a weekend at a spa. He wants to talk to David, wants to see him, but he can't force this on David. He waits (impatiently, but he keeps that to himself) and keeps the store open, even when everyone and their cousin comes in to give him a pitying look. It's worth it, when David finally comes back, when he tells him just how much he'd appreciated the gifts, when he dances for Patrick like nobody's watching.

God, but he loves David so much.

They kiss again, and touch again, and run the store together again. It's different this time, though. He tells David about Rachel, about how much he loves her and how he will never, ever be getting back together with her. He tells him about Matt too, about his childhood, about how good his parents are (though he doesn't tell David that they don't know yet, that feels too close to the still-healing wound for him to touch). He asks about David's past, too. Nothing more than David is willing to give him, but he wants to know. He wants to repair the cracks in the foundation, wants to build something solid, a relationship as strong as their store (one day, he thinks, they could have a contract, too. A certificate, an exchange of rings that shows the world how serious he is about all this. He knows they're not there yet, but he thinks they could be, one day).

He tells David he loves him. Finally. It's - he still doesn't know, isn’t completely sure that he isn't going to scare David off, but - he's getting better at taking leaps, he thinks. He loves David so much, it has to be written on his face whenever he looks at him, with every breath he takes. It was only a matter of time until it came out, he wants it to be at least a little bit in his control. So he tells David, and David promptly leaves. It's not entirely unexpected, but - it's still hardly what he'd dreamt of. It's okay, though, because David comes back. David comes back, and kisses him, and tells him he loves him. It's not exactly how Patrick had pictured it, but it's perfect all the same. He loves David so much, and he doesn't have to hide it. He wants to tell David again, to yell it from the Rose Apothecary rooftop so that everyone knows.

David goes to get him his tea, but doesn't come back. Even when David gets sidetracked, it usually doesn't take more than a few minutes, but it's okay. Whatever David is up to, he loves Patrick. He's going to come back. Patrick waits, and keeps selling products to singles, telling them to enjoy themselves as he thinks about how maybe he won't ever have to be single again. Then David does come back, and tells him about everything he'd missed at the café, about Ted’s grand gesture and how they’d spoken at the clinic (and after a moment of squirming under Patrick’s gaze he admits to having had a dog treat immediately before coming here and thoroughly kissing him, but it’s been a big enough day that Patrick’s willing to write that off. He does make a mental note to talk to Ted later, though).

They kiss, and fuck, and eat at restaurants that span the many Elms, and he decides that it's time to move out of Ray's, much as he will always be grateful for Ray’s - everything (mostly). It's time to put down roots. Schitt's creek is his home.

He and David had made sure to get tested when they started dating, but they do it again. They sit down at his table and, knowing they won't be interrupted, talk about whether this is a step they want to take. He trusts David with his life and wants to take every step David does. A few weeks later, when they share panels full of negatives and David slides into him with nothing between them, with the taste of vanilla on his tongue, it feels like coming home.

Rachel texts him. This time it’s not a string of nonsense, but a few texts about how she’d run into Josh and Stephanie at the store, apparently visiting after moving to Winnipeg shortly after he’d left. He tells her how Ray is from Winnipeg too, how small Manitoba is even when you’re in Ontario. They start talking more regularly, after that. He thinks she’d get along well with Stevie, but he doesn’t think he needs to rush into that unbalanced social dynamic either.

David, ever averse to any kind of physical activity that doesn't involve some combination of nudity and privacy, wins him a baseball game. As a thank you gift, he buys David four golden rings. It’s not a great thank you gift because he’d already planned to order them weeks before there was ever the risk of David playing ball and he isn’t going to give them to him right away, but it feels good all the same when he officially puts the order in with the jeweller in Elmdale (David seems contented by the pitstop at Ivan’s new bakery on the way home anyway). He wants to do something big, the kind of grand gesture that would make David wrap himself up in a throw and pretend like he isn’t crying if he watched it on TV. Something that shows David how much he means to Patrick, how he’s already irrevocably twined their lives together.

But there’s one thing he knows he needs to do first. He hasn’t seen his parents since he left, since the moment he pulled out of their driveway with a deathgrip on the steering wheel. For all that he feels secure in his life now, that he’s so incredibly proud of what he’s built here, of his life with David and his friends, he needs his parents to know before he proposes. After everything, all of the space he had forced between them, he wants them to know that he’s happy, how excited he is to propose to the man he loves.

It’s still an unknown. They're the kindest people he knows, with the biggest hearts, but - he's never seen them around a gay person, and when they'd been watching a show together the only kind of queer character that would show up was a caricature, nothing like a real person. Nothing like him. They'd never changed the channel or uttered a word against them, but - but what if it's different, when it's him?

The worst part is it's not even like he would be left with nothing. He's got a man that loves him, friends, people that he's beginning to see as family here. He's got the business, a whole life here. Even if his parents threw him out, refused to talk to him, he would still have a full life. He knows that David would be here to catch him, to show him he's the furthest thing from alone.

And yet - he freezes every time he so much as thinks about going back. He knows he can't tell them over the phone, but he doesn't want to take David there if he doesn't know how it will go. If there's even a chance of - of that. It becomes a habit, mapping out the drive there, visiting the local motel's website. Sometimes he gets as far as putting in his credit card info for a reservation before he closes the tab. But he always closes the tab.

He's stuck in limbo all over again. He can't move forward with his life with David until they know, but neither can he risk what little he has left with them. It’s a shade of what he’d had with them back in Whitemouth, but it’s still something. He can’t lose his parents entirely, even if he just talks to them for a few minutes when they call the store.

He should have known that David would nudge him forward, even unintentionally. He'd commented once, months ago, about how he's always wanted a surprise party. Twyla had thrown one for Erin's birthday, and when he'd said that (after David had talked about how tacky they were for most of the drive there) David had looked at him the same way he did when Patrick had said he just buys whatever jeans are on sale, and that was that. Or so Patrick had thought.

He should've known better. He knows that though David hides it well, he can incredibly thoughtful and goes the distance for people he cares about. Of course he'd throw Patrick a surprise party when he'd mentioned it once, when David had the time to plan it thoroughly. How David had managed to keep it a secret that whole time, he'll never know.

Of course David would invite his parents, too. He's talked to them a handful of times, always at the store, but as little as Patrick talks about them David knows what they mean to him. Of course he'd assumed that Patrick would have told them about him, about how much they mean to each other. What they are to each other. Sitting there on his couch, struggling to control the panic tight in his chest, he reminds himself that he's safe in David's arms. He’s loved. It's time.

He shows up to the café exactly when David had told him to, walking into a room filled a good number of the people he loves. His heart races as he tries to act surprised, as he hugs his parents for the first time since he left Whitemouth. It feels so unbelievably good, even knowing what is about to happen. What he needs to say. He tells David he loves him and feels it in every fibre of his being when David says it back. He's safe. He's loved. He slides into the booth across from his parents and tells them, finally, how important David is to him. They smile, and they tell him that they're happy for him, that they just want him to be happy. His dad doesn't get David's clothes, but he will. He will, because now he'll get to know David, get to learn about all of the things Patrick knows and loves about him. 

That night, he eats cake at a table with his favourite people, watches breathlessly as his boyfriend chats with his parents about his childhood in Whitemouth and his life now in Schitt’s Creek. The damage is not completely repaired (he knows that will take time, that his entire extended family and some difficult conversations and a few more leaps lie down the road) but now he at least knows it’s repairable. His parents won’t be going anywhere.

Well, they'll be going back home in two days, but they'll only be a phone call away. Someday he'll take David back home, show him where he grew up. But that's in the future. For now, he gets to enjoy the surprise party his boyfriend had so thoughtfully planned for him. He texts Rachel a picture of all of them together and learns that she’d been part of the plan, that she had helped David get in touch with his parents. He wraps himself up in David’s arms and dances next to his parents, pictures himself and David in their place after nearly thirty-five years of marriage. 

His dad pulls him back into the present when he asks to cut in and before he can remember if he’d ever danced with his dad, he whisks David away. Patrick watches, utterly rapt, as his dad makes David laugh and spins him around the café. Mr. Rose pats his shoulder and offers him a crab cake that he refuses only so that he can tease David about the leftovers later. 

His mom takes his dad’s spot as the next song begins, before David can make an escape attempt and inhale some wine after learning firsthand where Patrick’s earnestness comes from. As lovely as this entire night has been, it may hit hardest when his dad walks up to him holds out his hand. They’d never danced before, not like this (he’d thought through it as he’d watched them - the last time he’d danced with his mom would’ve been as a boy at Aunt Kathleen’s wedding, but he’s never danced with his dad). They dance here, now, at Patrick’s surprise birthday party thrown by his business partner-slash-boyfriend. His dad leans in halfway through the song and whispers that he’s proud of him, that he loves him, and calls him kiddo for the first time in years. 

He’s still reeling when his dad deposits him in David’s arms, but he settles here, with the man he’s going to marry. He’s going to propose as soon as he can as a birthday present to himself, deciding then and there that he’s done waiting. He kisses David, right there in front of his parents, and savours the gentle flavour of vanilla.

**Author's Note:**

> whew! this is the longest thing i've written in over three years and by far the fastest i've ever written anything. it was the easiest something has ever flowed for me but also feels far more experimental compared to the usual little fluff pieces i've managed before so i would be extra appreciative of any feedback! also, a big thank you to fishyspots for reading through it when it was still only a mostly-complete rough draft and i wanted to throw the whole thing out
> 
> i've had something like this stewing in my brain meat for a while but this particular rendition was very much inspired by three of my favourite Shane Koyczan poems (atlantis!, [stop signs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdbwOXdBER0), and tomatoes) and the stunningly long title is from another poem of his (how to be a person). dude's stuff always goes straight to my heart and he's a spoken word poet so everything is on spotify and i highly recommend checking him out 
> 
> the working title for this was a tale of two Patricks. I don't really see it as a clean cut between Whitemouth and Schitt's Creek but one of my favourite things about him (and many of the sc characters) is that he doesn't have everything sorted out by 25 and that even when he feels stuck in a bad situation there is always room to change and grow. it's a reminder that i need pretty frequently but as bad as the last year has been i'm choosing to believe this is still true. thanks for reading!


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